Tag: jo and fred firestone

I consider myself something of a connoisseur of puns. A pundit, you might say. A pun at its essence is simply a play on words, but a good pun exhibits draws an intersection between two otherwise unrelated conceptual fields in one word or phrase. A pun will always draw forth a groan, but a good pun also draws forth begrudging appreciation for the punster’s rhetorical cunning.

All of the above is a fancy way to say, “I like puns and I actually spend time thinking about them.” So when I happened to see a new card game come out last month called Punderdome, I was sold… even though I received my copy for free from Crown Publishers. Thanks! I decided to try it out with my wife and one of our friends, two people who both love and hate puns more than most.

The game is quite simple: someone draws two cards at the same time. Each card has a word or phrase on it, and then everyone else has 90 seconds to write down a pun that integrates the two cards. That’s the big idea of the game—I told you it was simple. It might not sound very difficult, but I found it to be rather difficult (and I tend to find puns to come fairly naturally). At the end of the 90 seconds the prompter decides which pun is the best, and that winner gets the two cards. Whoever gains the most cards wins.

A quirky aspect of the game is that whoever brings the game out and wants to play it is the first prompter, and (as a sort of apology for the groans that will ensue) he or she has to fill two mystery envelopes each with a prize. At the end of the game, the winner gets to pick one envelope as their prize. Of course, there might be a good prize in only one of the envelopes, so it’s a bit of a gamble.

The game is pretty fun, but I imagine it would be most fun with a large group of people. The only critique is that some of the combinations of cards can be fairly difficult, which decreases the fun when everybody fails to come up with anything. It’s a great game in general though, and I love how simple it is.

DISCLAIMER: I received a copy of this game from the publisher for the purpose of a fair, unbiased review.